Let me preface this with two things:

A) Even though this is Milliways, I know this might not be the place for this. I don't have social media of any kind because I despise it, and this is the only community I'm really a part of, so that's why this ended up here. If this isn't the right place, feel free to delete this and I will take no offence.

B) I know many people have it much worse than I do, this is just my personal experience at the moment, so take this with a grain of salt.

Now that I'm through that, I just wanted to get a few things off of my chest. I both fear that I will live in the past for the rest of my life, but I'm also very comfortable with it at the same time. I fear it because I will miss many new experiences, and for a lot of people stagnation is like a pre-death. At the same time, my past seemed so much better than life now. I know a lot of that can be attributed to it being my childhood, where people are, if they're lucky, more likely to be clueless and happy.

A lot of people were also there that are no longer here. My dad, and his parents are gone. I don't really have any contact with extended family on either side, so the last Parliers (from my particular branch, that I know) alive are myself and my half-brother. I was very close to my paternal grandmother, and while my paternal grandfather, not to speak ill of the dead, rest his poor soul, was kind of a prick, and we were never close, it's still a shame that he's gone. Things were never objectively amazing in my childhood, my dad had Primary Progrssive MS and was diagnosed right after I was born, and by the time I remember he was walking on a cane. His brain became ate up enough with lesions that it changed his personality, and he became a generally irritable and angry man. As a result my parents would get into screaming matches every day unless my half-brother was there (his mom and my dad had divorced and he visited on weekends every two weeks), and while that was probably a bit rough on me, I can't even remember 99% of their fights.

Combine that with the fact that I was always up at my paternal grandmother's when I could be (we lived on their property in Montezuma, NC, just outside of Newland), and it gives the past a bit of a rosy tint. I should mention she had a big old Gateway PC that ran Win2k. Probably a cheap PIII or something similar. My mom and dad divorced when I was 8, I moved to Elizabethton, TN, and 6 months later my paternal grandmother died of lung cancer, which I should mention, was caused by second-hand smoking. My paternal grandfather, my dad and my mom all smoked like there was no tomorrow. I consider this the turning point of my life.

After that, my dad was okay for a few years, but the MS quickly ate him up enough to where he couldn't take care of himself as easily. He moved in with my paternal grandfather, and my childhood home was destroyed. I barely took anything of any real value because I was 12 or 13 and stupid. A year later my paternal grandfather died, and my dad had to go into an assisted living home. From there, he got bad enough to where they couldn't take care of him, and he was sent to a nursing home. He went from a cane to a wheelchair, and from a wheelchair to bedridden. My father was very big into computers in his heyday, before I was born, but still was a little before the divorce. He was a big linux head, and wrote his own kernels, fun fact.

That's a big reason I'm so into old computers. Reliving that Win2k experience, using the giant old beige tower, it's just been combined with gaming, and often times, games that my dad played (Half-Life and DOOM being two examples). I try to live up to his example with computer work- he was never mentally around enough to be proud of me by the time I really knew what I was doing. Some days were better than others. I should've visited him more, but I couldn't bear seeing him even worse than the last time I had seen him. He was in Banner Elk, which was a 45min-1hr drive from Elizabethton, so a visit had to be planned in advance. I found myself planning to visit, and often times cancelling. It's not that I didn't love him- I just couldn't deal with his declining condition. I knew he was dying. For about a year before he died, I was preparing myself, which is another reason I wasn't visiting him often.

I saw him three days before he died, and he actually looked better than the last visit. He was on hospice at that point. Dad died on Feburary 2nd, 2020 of MS related complications.

My mom had married a woman, Kathy, in 2012. She never cut it as a second parent for many reasons. They divorced shortly after dad died, and leaving out a lot of details, they hadn't been living together for about 5 years. Recently, around fall of 2020, she met another woman, Jennifer, and it looked like it might be okay. Long story short, Jennifer and I don't get along, and now I've moved out and am living with a roommate. I felt like I'd be kicked out for about three weeks, which was more my fault, to be fair, and the stress started me smoking.

I don't care anymore. I'm 19 and feel ancient- my story ended when I was eight. I'm far out beyond my expiration date, and I just don't care. I am a smoker now, and I find that I don't care what happens when I'm older. I know what they do to you- but I just don't care. My roommate smokes, so I don't feel bad about that- and I'm going to end up being alone for the rest of my life, so nobody else to worry about. I've been struggling with living in the past for years, and for about two or three I was finally moving forwards, looking forward to what life might still have to offer, but I feel that my mother's been taken from me- and while that's a childish line of thought, it's true. I have a flip phone, I bought a PlayStation 2, the console in our house when mom and dad were still together, and am playing games that were often played at that time on it- I sold the graphics card in my ~US$1,800 gaming rig I had spent a year and a half working on and upgrading, and threw the rest away. I'm typing this on my dad's last laptop.

I can't stand this future, and I'm done trying to do so. I'm going to grasp at the last few straws of the past that are left, as they actively dwindle, until I die. I am fueled mostly by anger towards the new world, and fondness for the old world. I feel like if I cling on to what was, I'm making some sort of statement. A cry out to deaf ears that this world isn't mine, it never was, and it never will be, and that I don't belong here, and I never did.

Whoever decides to sit down and read this, thank you. I'm not looking for sympathy or advice as much as I am just trying to get this off of my chest, and for a group of people who's focus is on the technology of the past and working with nostalgic things, I thought this would be a stretch, but that it would fit.

[EDIT]
Fixing an error- also I wanted to clarify that I'm not homophobic in any way, I'm bi myself. The problem was the people, not the gender. Maybe that didn't need to be said but I felt that it needed to be put out there.